Why online retailers have three times the returns of traditional sellers

April 10, 2016

When the black, $128.95 Vince Camuto summer sandals size 6, with a 2-inch cork heel turned out to be too big, Sherri Theodore decided to return them to Nordstrom’s online, where she had bought them a few weeks before.

“They just weren’t right for me,” said Theodore, 61, a retired bookkeeper from Ardmore. She reboxed the shoes and drove to the nearby Bala Cynwyd Shopping Center to mail them back at a UPS store there.

Where do rejected items bought online or at a brick-and-mortar store end up when returned? Is there a special return heaven in cyberspace? In retail parlance, it’s called reverse logistics.